hegel's critique of kantian practical reason

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Hegel's Critique of Kantian Practical ReasonPhilip J. KainSanta Clara University, [email protected]

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This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Kain, P. J. "Hegel's Critique of Kantian Practical Reason," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 28(1998): 367-412, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1998.10715978.

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Recommended CitationKain, P. J. "Hegel's Critique of Kantian Practical Reason," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 28 (1998): 367-412.

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Hegel's Critique of

Kantian Practical Reason

PHILIP J. KAIN

Santa Clara University

Santa Clara, CA 95053

USA

While many philosophers have found Hegel's critique of Kantian ethics to be interesting in

certain respects, overall most tend to �nd it rather shallow and to think that Hegel either

misunderstands Kant’s thought or has a rather crude understanding of it. For example, in

examining the last two sections of Chapter V of the Phenomenology— "Reason as Lawgiver" and

"Reason as Testing Laws" (where we get an extended critique of the categorical

imperative)—Lauer �nds Hegel's treatment to be truncated and inadequate. The only trouble,

1

1 Notes

Hegel’s Critique of Kantian Practical Reason

though, is that like most other readers of the Phenomenology, Lauer does not recognize that

Hegel had been examining and criticizing Kantian ethics throughout a much greater part

of—indeed, more than half of—Chapter V. Once we do understand this, I think we must

concede that Hegel's treatment is hardly truncated and that it cannot be described as shallow or

inadequate. I will try to show that Hegel demonstrates a rather sophisticated understanding of,

and gives a serious and thorough critique of, Kantian practical reason.

A good part of the problem here is due to Hegel's own obscurity. The Phenomenology is

�lled with veiled allusions to other texts. Lauer thinks we should be slow in concluding just

what texts Hegel is actually referring to. He suggests that Hegel may not have been sure himself

or that he wanted to refer to an amalgam of positions. This point is well taken. Hegel's

2

allusions are not speci�c and precise. They are general, open, even symbolic—as if they were

trying to refer to as much as possible. Thus, I very de�nitely do not want to imply that Hegel

was signi�cantly in�uenced by and alludes to Kant and not other philosophers. Nor do I want

to suggest that by establishing a connection to Kant we will be able to explain everything that is

going on in Hegel's text. Nevertheless, I do think that to understand Hegel we simply must begin

Q. Lauer, S.J., A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Fordham

University Press, 1976), 172.

2 Lauer, 42. See also, R.B. Pippin, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of

Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 118. Also, M.S. Gram,

“Moral and Literary Ideals in Hegel’s Critique of ‘The Moral View of the World,’” CLIO, 7 (1978),

376.


to understand who and what he is alluding to. I want to try to show that among all the other

things that Hegel is doing in Chapter V he is criticizing Kant's ethics and that only when we see

this will Hegel's thought start to come into focus, become clear and philosophically interesting,

and provide us with a serious critique of Kantian ethical theory.

I

Hegel wants to claim that Kant’s account of morality is inadequate and that to give an adequate

account we must move to Sittlichkeit. In the section entitled "The Actualization of Rational

Self-Consciousness Through Its Own Activity," Hegel begins to explain his concept of

Sittlichkeit. Reason, Hegel claims, is actualized only in a free nation. Only there can we �nd

3

reason objectively realized in the customs, traditions, practices, laws, and institutions of a people.

The citizens pursue their purposes, objectify themselves in their institutions, and see themselves

in their world. They create a common public life which is the outcome of the activity of the

individual citizens, yet is objective and substantial—it is a force that develops, sustains, and

morally empowers its citizens. 4

This common public life �rst appears in history in the Greek polis. The polis is the

construction of its citizens. It exists through their work, recognition, and sacri�ce. It establishes

a common life that is objectively rooted in social and public institutions; public values, traditions,

3 Phenomenology of Spirit (hereafter PhS ), trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1977), 214 and, for the German, Gesammelte Werke (hereafter GW ), ed. Rheinisch-Westfälischen

Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968 �.), IX, 195.

4 PhS, 211-13 and GW, IX, 193-94.


and laws; a whole philosophy, religion, and art. Citizens are willing to serve and to sacri�ce for

this objective reality, a reality which then motivates them, becomes their mission and purpose,

and forms and empowers them as a people. Moreover, this objective sociocultural world is not

other, alien, or heteronomous. The citizens are not unfree. They see themselves in a world they

have constructed; they �nd this world to be their own; and they are at one with it. They �nd

reason in their world and are free.

Sittlichkeit is di�erent from Moralität. Moralität begins with Socrates and reaches its high

point in Kant. Moralität is individual, rational, and re�ective morality. It is based upon

individual autonomy and personal conviction. One must rationally decide what is moral and do

it because it is moral—because our rationality tells us that it is the right thing to do. This

rational and re�ective component is relatively absent in traditional Sittlichkeit, which is best

represented, for Hegel, in the Greek polis before the rise of Socratic Moralität. Sittlichkeit is

ethical behavior grounded in custom and tradition and developed through habit and imitation in

accordance with the laws and practices of the community. Personal re�ection and analysis have

little to do with traditional Sittlichkeit. Sittlichkeit is ethical life built into one's character,

attitudes, and feelings.

Furthermore, Moralität involves an ought. It is morality that ought to be realized. This

ought is also absent from Sittlichkeit. For it, morality is not something we merely ought to

realize or ought to be. Morality exists—it is. It is already embedded in our customs, traditions,

practices, character, attitudes, and feelings. The objective ethical order already exists in, is

continuously practiced by, is actualized in, the citizen.


The only sort of morality that Hegel discusses and critiques in the remainder of Chapter V is

Moralität —individual, rational, re�ective morality with individual subjectivity as the source of

moral determination. In Chapter VI, culture will involve Sittlichkeit— ethical life, morality built

upon custom, tradition, and habit—the morality of a people with moral content given in their

traditions, institutions, and practices, not the abstract and formal Moralität of Kant.

In one sense Sittlichkeit is superior to Moralität. It has a rich content—it is objective,

public, and lived. Whereas Moralität is formal and abstract. But in another sense traditional

Sittlichkeit is inferior to Moralität. Traditional Sittlichkeit's laws are immediate; they are given

as absolutes by tradition, the gods, custom. In contrast to Moralität, the role of subjectivity and

re�ection is minimal and individual freedom is undeveloped.

What Hegel wants for the modern world is neither traditional Sittlichkeit nor modern

Moralität. He wants a synthesis of Sittlichkeit and Moralität , which though at times confusing

he also calls Sittlichkeit. This higher Sittlichkeit , which Hegel lays out in detail only in the

Philosophy of Right, combines the rational and re�ective side of Moralität with the

transcendence of the ought characteristic of Sittlichkeit. It is rational re�ective morality that

actually exists as concretely embedded in the customs, traditions, laws, character, practices, and

feelings of a people. 5

I hope to show that Hegel's entire treatment of practical reason in Chapter V of the

Phenomenology is intended as a critique of Kantian Moralität. To my knowledge this has not

been recognized by other commentators. The aim of this critique is to drive us toward

Sittlichkeit. Let me try to make the case.

5 PhS, 216 and GW, IX, 197.


II

The �rst consciousness we meet, in the section entitled "Pleasure and Necessity," is a hedonistic

consciousness. It pursues pleasure. "It plunges … into life and indulges to the full.… It does not

so much make its own happiness as straightway take it and enjoy it.… It takes hold of life much

as a ripe fruit is plucked, which readily o�ers itself to the hand that takes it." What, one might

6

ask, has this to do with Kantian ethics? Hegel will not accept the Kantian distinction between

phenomena and noumena nor the existence of an unknown thing-in-itself. It follows from this,

7

then, that we are not going to be easily able to maintain a neat Kantian distinction between a pure

autonomous reason, on the one hand, and, on the other, pathological inclinations, interests, or

desires. Hegel starts with pleasure because he is not about to let Kant banish it from the pure

realm of reason and morality into some pathological and heteronomous outside. 8

It cannot be denied that Kant at times does present a rather crude picture of duty and

inclination as if they were necessarily opposed and such that moral action must be done, as he

6 PhS, 218 and GW, IX, 199.

7 The Logic of Hegel (hereafter L ), trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1968), 91-92 and, for the German, Sämtliche Werke (hereafter SW ), ed. H. Glockner (Stuttgart:

Frommann, 1927 �.), VIII, 133. PhS, 103 and GW, IX, 102.

8 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter F ), trans. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 59-60 and, for the German, Kant's gesammelte Schriften (hereafter KGS ),

ed. Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1910 �.), IV,

440-41.


says in the Foundations, "only from duty and without any inclination … " But it is not only

9

such views that Hegel is attacking. Hegel is well aware that Kant’s considered view is not that

duty and inclination are mutually exclusive and need be opposed. He is quite well aware that for

Kant the perfect agreement of duty and inclination is an “ideal of holiness … which we should

strive to approach … in an uninterrupted in�nite progress” and that such holiness is even “the

supreme condition of the highest good.” Indeed, Hegel will discuss this very ideal at length not

10

only in “The Moral View of the World” at the end of Chapter VI, but as I shall argue shortly also

in the section that immediately follows ”Pleasure and Necessity,” namely, in “The Law of the

Heart.” At any rate, Hegel does not �nd acceptable even Kant’s considered view. Kant’s

considered view is that a moral act need not be free of inclination—perhaps it is even the case

that it can never be—but still it must not be determined by inclination. Even when duty and

inclination accord, the act must be done from duty, not from inclination. In Hegel’s view, Kant

11

9 F, 14, also 46 and KGS, IV, 398, 428.

10 Critique of Practical Reason (hereafter CPrR ), trans. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 86, 126 and KGS, V, 83-84, 122.

11 CPrR, 86 and KGS, V, 83-84. Metaphysical Principles of Virtue: Part II of the

Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter MPV ), trans. J. Ellington (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), 12

and KGS, VI, 213-14. Also, see H.E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1990), 39-40, 97, 102, 110-11. Also, A.W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 146-48. K.R. Westphal, “Hegel’s Critique of

Kant’s Moral View of the World,” Philosophical Topics, 19 (1991), 150. B. Herman, The Practice

of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 12.


does not give enough place to inclination. A general theme of the whole remainder of Chapter V,

I shall argue, is that inclination, interest, love, or desire are far more able to produce morality, and

that Kantian practical reason is far less able to produce morality, than Kant thinks is the case.

Thus, it seems to me that Lauer radically misunderstands “Pleasure and Necessity” in taking

it to be a traditional attack on pleasure as self-defeating. It is not that at all, but the very

12

opposite—a defense. Hegel alludes to the Faust story and claims that the pleasure-seeking of this

consciousness does not want to destroy the other, but only its otherness. In other words, Hegel

13

is talking about love. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel says,

Love means in general terms the consciousness of my unity with another, so that I am not

in sel�sh isolation but win my self-consciousness only as the renunciation of my

independence and through knowing myself as the unity of myself with another and of the

other with me.… The �rst moment in love is that I do not wish to be a self-subsistent and

independent person and that, if I were, then I would feel defective and incomplete. The

second moment is that I �nd myself in another person, that I count for something in the

other, while the other in turn comes to count for something in me.… love is unity of an

ethical type. 14

12 Lauer, 157.

13 PhS, 218 and GW, IX, 199.

14 Hegel's Philosophy of Right (hereafter PR ), trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1967), 261-62 and SW, VII, 237-38.


In "Pleasure and Necessity," Hegel contrasts the ethical unity involved in love to whatever it is

that makes individuals separate. In a very obscure passage, he says, "But here this element

which gives to both a separate actuality is rather the category, a being which is essentially in the

form of thought. It is therefore the consciousness of independence—let it be natural

consciousness, or consciousness developed into a system of laws—which preserves the

individuals each for himself." If this passage is not intended to refer explicitly to the Kantian

15

categorical imperative, it is at least the case that the categorical imperative is one example of

what Hegel is talking about. Kantian practical reason certainly grounds the separateness and

independence of the individual. It roots the individual in a transcendental sphere apart and

makes the individual the source of all law—even a system of laws. Each individual is taken to be

a supreme lawgiver out of which can arise a kingdom of ends. Kant says,

By a “kingdom” I understand the union of di�erent rational beings in a system by common

laws. Now since it is by laws that ends are determined as regards their universal validity,

hence, if we abstract from the personal di�erences of rational beings, and likewise from all

the content of their private ends, we shall be able to conceive all ends combined in a

systematic whole … 16

15 PhS, 218 (italics in text) and GW, IX, 199.

16 Here I prefer the Abbott translation, see Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of

Morals , trans. T.K. Abbott (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), 50 and KGS, IV, 433; for the Beck

translation, see F, 51.


For Kant, to achieve the universal, to produce a kingdom of ends, to live in ethical unity with

others under a system of laws, we must abstract from the personal interests and private ends of

human beings; we must withdraw into the individuality and apartness of practical reason. Are

we really going to �nd unity with others in this way? We would seem to be moving away from

unity toward the separate, individual, and isolated.

Hegel is suggesting that Kantian practical reason is less likely to be successful in producing

the ethical union it seeks and more likely to produce separateness and isolation than is love,

which indeed has already achieved, Hegel says, the "unity of itself and the other

self-consciousness"—it has already achieved the universal. Love's unity with the other

17

self-consciousness is certainly a movement away from individual isolation toward the universal,

and if love expands, pushes toward an even larger unity with others in a kingdom of ends (as we

shall see that it does in "The Law of the Heart"), it will move further toward the universal. What

Hegel is trying to suggest here is that there is good reason to think that love might tend more

e�ectively toward unity, the overcoming of separateness, the universal, the moral, than does

Kantian practical reason.

When Kant discusses love in the Foundations, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the

Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, he insists that love as an inclination cannot be commanded as

a duty. We cannot have a duty to do something gladly. Thus, for example, when Scripture



commands us to love our neighbor or our enemy, in Kant’s view it cannot mean to command love

as an inclination, but simply bene�cence from duty—not pathological love, but practical love. 18

It is quite clear to any sensible reader, however, that the ideal of the Gospels is not

bene�cence from duty, but precisely love as an inclination. In the Spirit of Christianity, Hegel

attacks Kant’s distortion of the Gospels and his reduction of love to moral duty. In love, for

19

Hegel, all thought of duty vanishes. Love is higher than law and makes obedience to law

super�uous. Inclination is uni�ed with the law and love ful�lls the law in such a way that law is

annulled as law. Love transcends all cleavage between duty and inclination. 20

Hegel goes on to argue that love so transcends the law that the Gospels even suggest that we

do not want to be conscious of any action as a duty because that would mean the "intrusion of

something alien, resulting in the impurity of the action … " It is not, as for Kant, inclination

21

that introduces impurity. Duty introduces the impurity. A charitable action done out of love

22

could be spoiled if one started to think of it as a duty. But Hegel goes even further than this.

18 F, 15-16 and KGS, IV, 399. CPrR, 86 and KGS, V, 83. MPV, 60-61, 70, 113-14 and

KGS, VI, 401-2, 410, 449-50. Indeed, Kant even counsels “moral apathy,” a lack of emotion, which,

however, is to be distinguished from indi�erence; MPV, 68 and KGS, VI, 408.

19 Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate, in On Christianity: Early Theological Writings, trans.

T.M. Knox (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970), 205-24 and, for the German, Hegels theologische

Jugendschriften (hereafter HTJ ), ed. H. Nohl (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1966), 261-75.

20 Spirit of Christianity , 212-14 and HTJ, 266-68.

21 Spirit of Christianity, 219, also see 220 and HTJ, 272, 273.

22 MPV, 12 and KGS, VI, 213.


Since duty and inclination have been uni�ed and all opposition overcome, he says, the law can

"be taken up ( aufgenommen ) into love." Very interestingly, this can be seen as exactly the

23

reverse of what Allison calls Kant’s incorporation thesis. In Religion Within the Limits of Reason

Alone, Kant writes,

freedom of the will ( Willkür ) is of a wholly unique nature in that an incentive can

determine the will ( Willkür ) to an action only so far as the individual has incorporated

( aufgenommen ) it into his maxim (has made it the general rule in accordance with which

he will conduct himself); only thus can an incentive, whatever it may be, co-exist with the

absolute spontaneity of the will ( Willkür ) (i.e., freedom). 24

Thus, for Kant, love may determine our will in a moral act, but only insofar as it is

incorporated into a maxim, that is, only insofar as it becomes bene�cence from duty or practical

love. Whereas Hegel’s view seems to be that in the ideal case duty could determine our will but

only insofar as it had been taken up into love.

I �nd Hegel’s view much more acceptable than Kant’s, but, whatever one decides on this

issue, it is quite clear that Hegel is not, as Ameriks and Allison seem to suggest he is, merely

23 Spirit of Christianity, 225 and HTJ, 277.

24 Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (hereafter RWLRA ) , trans. T.M. Greene and

H.H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 19 (last italics in the text) and, for the German,

KGS, VI, 23-24. Allison 39-40.


attacking a crudely understood notion of the opposition of duty to inclination. Hegel is taking

25

on Kant’s subtlest and most considered views and attempting to show that, even so, duty involves

an abstract and alien distance that falls short of the ethical union achievable by love.

Nevertheless, I de�nitely do not want to suggest that in the Phenomenology Hegel is simply

holding, as he may have been at moments in the Spirit of Christianity, that love is moral and that

Kantian practical reason is not. Hegel goes on to recognize (again with Faust, Faust's love for

Gretchen, and her death in mind) that the life of pleasure is a life of necessity, fate, destiny—even

of death and destruction. Here Hegel might seem to have fallen back into the crude view that

inclination and desire are simply opposed to the moral—and are heteronomous, determined, part

of a realm of causal necessity, and so forth.

But Hegel is much more careful than this. We must attend more closely to the way in which

he understands fate. He says, "necessity, fate, and the like, is just that about which we cannot say

what it does, what its speci�c laws and positive content are, because it is … a relation that is

simple and empty, but also irresistible and imperturbable, whose work is merely the nothingness

of individuality." Fate is not to be identi�ed with ordinary causal determinism. Fate is more

26

like chance. It is certainly nothing that a scientist can predict ahead of time—because we cannot

say what the laws are. Yet a life at the mercy of chance can certainly be experienced as a cruel

fate. Chance is not at all like the regular and predictable causal determinism to be expected in

25 K. Ameriks, “The Hegelian Critique of Kantian Morality,” in New Essays on Kant, ed. B.

den Ouden and M. Moen (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 194-97. Allison, 184-85.



the Kantian realm of phenomenal appearance, yet, Hegel is suggesting, the total absence of

predictability and control is just as much, or more, a necessity, a fate, a heteronomy.

If this is conceded, then it will be very interesting to notice that while Kant usually holds that

freedom has its own laws, at least in some places he explains freedom as independence from the

laws of nature, liberation from all compulsion, the absence of all rules. For Hegel, I suggest,

27

freedom as absence of law (perhaps even—Hegel will suggest as we proceed— freedom that is

unable to give us its laws) can be seen as fate. We cannot say what it does—it is blind,

imperturbable, and irresistible. To be cut o� from the world is very likely to end up at the mercy

of the world. In Hegel's view, to the extent that the Kantian transcendental self is separate from

the concrete causal world, to the extent that it is cut o� from the empirical, it risks subjecting

itself to the mercy of fate—or at least seriously contributes to this. Fate occurs because we turn

away from the world, leave it to itself, to chance, and thus end up at the mercy of chance, which

appears as an uncontrollable necessity. If this is so, it spells disaster for Kant. Fate, though it

arises from freedom, subverts freedom. If you are subject to fate you are not self-determined. If

the self has a destiny, if it is at the mercy of fate, if it is the plaything of chance, the self becomes

alien to itself. Heteronomy would emerge within the autonomous self.

Fate can be compared to history. History is very central to Hegel's concept of Sittlichkeit.

The sociocultural realm is the historical product of human activity, a product that in turn

transforms and develops human beings themselves, a realm which they can come to understand

27 Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter CPR ), A447=B475; I have used the N. Kemp Smith

translation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965) and KGS, III-IV, but cite the standard A and B

edition pagination so that any edition may be used. Allison, 20. Also CPrR, 100 and KGS, V, 97.


and in which they can come to be at home and thus free. Sittlichkeit is �rst beginning to emerge

here in Chapter V of the Phenomenology, and fate is the �rst, simplest, thinnest view of history.

We have nothing but purely individual consciousnesses, their drives, passions, desires, and the

clashes between them—all understood as something completely uncontrolled, ununderstood,

mere chaos, mere chance. Such a view of history emerges because we view the world only from

the inadequate perspective of individual consciousness and are unable to see how consciousness

can understand let alone produce or control its historical world—it merely su�ers it. Two

sections further on in the Phenomenology , in "Virtue and the Way of the World," we will already

have moved, I shall argue, to a more complex view of history, the view Kant spells out in his

"Idea for a Universal History," where fate will turn into providence. In other words, history will

appear rationally directed. To speak of fate is to say there is no rationality—no order, direction,

or control—involved.

III

In the next section of Chapter V, "The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit," we

move from Goethe's Faust to his Werther, and we get a more complicated moral consciousness

that still seeks pleasure, but not merely its own. Its pleasure is to bring pleasure to all hearts. As

in "Pleasure and Necessity," love rather e�ectively tends toward the universal and it is also the

case that it is inclined to do so. The Law of the Heart, then, seeks to promote the welfare of all

humanity as a universal end and it takes pleasure in doing so. There is a lawlike attitude here. 28

This consciousness acts upon a Kantian categorical imperative. Or, as Hegel puts it, this heart

28 PhS, 221-22 and GW, IX, 202-3.


“has within it a law … “ In other words, it takes up or incorporates the law: what this heart

29

“realizes is itself the law, and its pleasure is therefore at the same time the universal pleasure of

all hearts. To it the two are undivided; its pleasure is what conforms to the law, and the

realization of the law of universal humanity procures for it its own particular pleasure.” 30

Compare this to Kant, who in the Foundations says,

To be bene�cent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so

sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they

�nd a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of

others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this

kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but

is on a level with other inclinations, for example, the inclination to honor, which …

deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem. 31

Acting from inclination has no true moral worth. But, on the other hand, acting from duty

and being inclined to do so is an ideal of holiness. Kant says, “to love one’s neighbor means to

like to practice all duties toward him. The command which makes this a rule cannot require that

29 PhS, 221 and GW, IX, 202.

30 PhS, 222 and GW, IX, 203.

31 Here I prefer Abbott’s translation; see F (Abbott trans.), 15-16 and KGS, IV, 398. For

Beck’s translation, see F, 14. Also, see MPV, 49-50 and KGS, VI, 391.


we have this disposition but only that we endeavor after it.” The perfect agreement of duty and

32

inclination is an

ideal of holiness … unattainable by any creature … yet an archetype which we should

strive to approach … in an uninterrupted in�nite progress. If a rational creature could ever

reach the stage of thoroughly liking to do all moral laws, it would mean that there was no

possibility of there being in him a desire which could tempt him to deviate from them … To

such a level of moral disposition no creature can ever attain. 33

Such holiness is “the supreme condition of the highest good.” The highest good, for Kant, sets

34

as its ideal a perfect agreement between the moral law and inclination— in other words, it is a

law of the heart. And since the satisfaction of our inclinations would amount to happiness, the

highest good also requires the reconciliation of virtue and happiness. If happiness did not

accompany virtue, we certainly would not have the highest good for human beings. But virtue

and happiness would seem to be irreconcilable. Happiness requires the regular satisfaction of

our inclinations, interests, and desires. But to be virtuous, we certainly cannot be determined by

inclination, interest, or desire. We must be determined by the moral law. And there is no reason

to think that virtue will produce happiness. If we lived solely in a phenomenal world, Kant

thinks, there would be no reason to expect virtue and happiness to accord. Only if there is also

32 CPrR, 86 and KGS, V, 83.

33 Ibid.

34 CPrR, 126 and KGS, V, 122.


an intelligible world can we imagine such reconciliation as an ideal, and only, Kant thinks, if we

postulate a God who will see to it that nature is ordered such that while we act virtuously our

desires will at the same time be satis�ed so that we can also be happy, and happy in proportion to

our worthiness to be happy, that is, in proportion to our virtue. 35

What we have here then, Hegel insists, and Kant fully admits, is an ideal . Inclination ideally

ought to agree with the moral law—but this is not something actually achieved. Hegel says that

36

the law is still separated from the heart and exists on its own such that most of humanity, while

accepting the law, will not actually �nd it in unity with the heart and so will have to dispense

with actual enjoyment in obeying it. Thus the law will start to become for the heart a mere show

that will not seem to deserve the authority and reality it is supposed to have. Hegel's point in all

37

of this, I believe, is that we have not transcended all cleavage between objective law and

subjective feeling so as to annul the law as law—we have not achieved Sittlichkeit. We merely

have a Kantian ideal of unity between law and inclination. And this ideal, Hegel wants to go on

to argue, is not likely to work in actual cases.

From the start, the law of the heart has hated and opposed any imposition from outside (by

authorities, the government, whatever) of laws that o�end the heart. All law must agree with the

35 CPrR, 111-19, 128-33 and KGS, V, 107-15, 124-28. For a di�erent but interesting

treatment of the Law of the Heart, see J.N. Shklar, Freedom and Independence: A Study of the

Political Ideas of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1976), 102-9.

36 CPrR, 86 and KGS, V, 83. MPV, 151 and KGS, VI, 482.

37 PhS, 222-23 and GW, IX, 203-4.


heart—that is the only acceptable law. Kant would at least seem to be in agreement with this. In

Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, he claims that we have a practical knowledge that

rests “solely upon reason and … lies as close to every man, even the most simple, as though it

were engraved upon his heart—a law, which we need but name to �nd ourselves at once in

agreement with everyone else regarding its authority, and which carries with it in everyone’s

consciousness unconditioned binding force, to wit, the law of morality.” Where does this

38

law—capable of producing such complete agreement as if engraved upon our very hearts—come

from? In the Foundations, the third formulation of the categorical imperative tells us that each

rational being is a supreme legislator, “subject only to his own, yet universal, legislation, and …

only bound to act in accordance with his own will, which is, however, designed by nature to be a

will giving universal laws.” 39

Kant sees no trouble at all in claiming that we are subject to no law but our own, yet that we

can legislate for all. Lacking Sittlichkeit, Hegel thinks there will be a great deal of trouble to be

found here. In the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, Kant does admit that there is a distinction

we must notice. In ethics the “law is conceived as the law of one’s own will and not of the will

in general, which could also be the will of others; in the latter case such a law would give rise to

a juridical duty … “ This seems to suggest that while a law one gives oneself can be one’s own,

40

others might not take it as their own. Indeed, Kant says that I can “be forced by others to

actions which are directed as means to an end, but I can never be forced by others to have an end;

38 RWLRA, 169 (�rst italics added; second in the text) and KGS, VI, 181.

39 F, 51 and KGS, IV, 432.

40 MPV, 47 (my italics) and KGS, VI, 389.


I alone can make something an end for myself.… for I can have no end except of my own

making.” Thus, while it is my duty, for Kant, to promote the happiness of others as my end,

it

41 42

does not seem that this could cause others to accept it as their end. In fact, in Religion Within the

Limits of Reason Alone, it seems to be the case that in an ethical commonwealth not only will it

be the case that others will not accept my legislation as their own but that even:

the people, as a people, cannot itself be regarded as the law-giver. For in such a

commonwealth all the laws are expressly designed to promote the morality of actions

(which is something inner, and hence cannot be subject to public human laws), whereas, in

contrast, these public laws—and this would go to constitute a juridical commonwealth—are

directed only toward the legality of actions, which meets the eye, and not towards (inner)

morality … 43

However, it would seem that Kant wants it both ways. The state cannot force disposition to

virtue, yet it seems to count on it,

it would be a contradiction … for the political commonwealth to compel its citizens to

enter into an ethical commonwealth, since the very concept of the latter involves freedom

from coercion. Every political commonwealth may indeed wish to be possessed of a

41 MPV, 38-39 and KGS, VI, 381.

42 MPV, 46, 43 and KGS, VI, 388, 385-86.

43 RWLRA, 90 (italics in text) and KGS, VI, 98-99.


sovereignty, according to laws of virtue, over the spirits [of its citizens]; for then, when its

methods of compulsion do not avail … their dispositions to virtue would bring about what

was required. But woe to the legislator who wishes to establish through force a polity

directed to ethical ends! For in so doing he would not merely achieve the very opposite of

an ethical polity but also undermine his political state and make it insecure. 44

The legislator wants everyone to take the legislator’s law as their own, be disposed toward it,

take it as a law of their heart, but woe to the legislator who tries to legislate such a law of the

heart. We are certainly not very far along here toward the ideal of agreement between duty and

inclination, virtue and happiness, the law and the heart. And so, as Hegel puts it, what will

happen is that others will not �nd the law to be “the ful�llment of the law of their hearts, but

rather that of someone else; and, precisely in accordance with the universal law that each shall

�nd in what is law his own heart, they turn against the reality he set up, just as he turned against

theirs. Thus, just as the individual at �rst �nds only the rigid law, now he �nds the hearts of men

themselves, opposed to his excellent intentions and detestable.” Others cannot recognize

45

themselves in the law of my heart. If my legislation were to stand as a universal ordinance,

others would �nd it merely my imposition and would turn against it as the very law of the heart

demands. 46

44 RWLRA, 87 (brackets in text) and KGS, VI, 95-96.


46 PhS, 223-24 and GW, IX, 203-4.


What Hegel is suggesting here, and it is something he will further develop in the section

entitled "The Spiritual Animal Kingdom," is that Kant was quite correct in the view that the law

must come from your own reason— though Kant was not fully aware of what this actually

implied. It is not enough that laws just be rational. They must be your own. Human beings are

very much motivated by what is their own—their desire to express themselves and recognize

their own doing in the result. And if forced to chose between what is rational or universal and

what is their own they will �nd such a situation oppressive. Lauer argues that the trouble with

the law of the heart is that it does not act on the categorical imperative. That is seriously

47

mistaken. The law of the heart does involve a categorical imperative and that is precisely what

is wrong with it. Hegel is attacking the categorical imperative.

But the worst is yet to come. Hegel thinks that Kantian morality will always result in an alien

situation, one that always establishes a law that is not your own—even if you yourself instituted

the law. In the Spirit of Christianity, Hegel said, the "consciousness of having performed his

duty enables the individual to claim universality for himself; he intuits himself as universal, as

raised above himself qua particular and above the whole sphere of particularity, i.e., above the

mass of individuals.… and this self-consciousness of his is as foreign to the action as men’s

applause.” In the “Law of the Heart,” Hegel says that in carrying out 48

the law of his heart.… the law has in fact escaped the individual; it directly becomes merely

the relation which was supposed to be got rid of. The law of the heart, through its very

47 Lauer, 158-59.

48 Spirit of Christianity, 219-20 (italics in text) and HTJ, 272.


realization, ceases to be a law of the heart. For in its realization it … is now a universal

power for which this particular heart is a matter of indi�erence, so that the individual, by

setting up his own ordinance, no longer �nds it to be his own. Consequently, what the

individual brings into being through the realization of his law, is not his law … but actually

is for him an alien a�air … a superior power which is [not] only alien to him, but one

which is hostile. 49

After all, if the legislation of public law, as we have seen Kant himself say in Religion Within the

Limits of Reason Alone, cannot be taken to demand anything inner, if the legislator cannot

expect to legislate disposition to virtue (without undermining the political state and making it

insecure), then what di�erence does it make who the legislator is—you yourself or someone

else? As soon as a public law is established that must keep its distance in this way from the

inner, from disposition, from your own, from the heart, such a law (Hegel is perfectly correct in

claiming) will escape the individual and become an alien power—even for the very individual

who established the law.

The problem here is that we do not have Sittlichkeit. We have instead a modern separation of

universal law and the heart—a separation perfectly expressed in Kantian ethics. Moreover,

Kantian ethics simply would not accept Sittlichkeit. The Kantian individual would certainly �nd

the "divine and human ordinance[s]" of the ancient world, which were taken "as an accepted

authority", to be instead, as Hegel puts it, "a dead authority in which not only its own self … but

also those subject to that ordinance would have no consciousness of themselves … " In short,



Kantian ethics would �nd the objective laws of the ancient world to be an alien authority—it

would �nd them to be heteronomous. It would see nothing of itself, its own, in those laws.

Custom and tradition, laws based on religion or mythology, for Kant, could not be forms of

rational autonomy. They would be other, heteronomous, alien. What this completely misses, in

Hegel’s view, is that ancient law was "really animated by the consciousness of all", it was in fact

"the law of every heart.… for this means nothing else than that individuality becomes an object

to itself in the form of universality in which, however, it does not recognize itself." The divine

50

and human laws of the ancient world, for Hegel, were constituted by the cultural and historical

action of the citizens themselves and embedded in their customs, traditions, practices, and

feelings—they were their own laws. They had an objective and universal form such that

citizens did not see that they had constituted them, but they were the law of every heart. The

universal and feelings were not separate here. Their unity was not a mere ideal; their unity was

actual. As Hegel put it in an earlier text, 51

As free men the Greeks and Romans obeyed laws laid down by themselves, obeyed men

whom they had themselves appointed to o�ce, waged wars on which they had themselves

decided, gave their property, exhausted their passions, and sacri�ced their lives by

thousands for an end which was their own. They neither learned nor taught [a moral

50 PhS, 224-25 and GW, IX, 205.

51 Also, see Hegel's discussion of folk religion in the "Tübingen Essay" of 1793, in Three

Essays, 1793-1795, trans. P. Fuss and J. Dobbins (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press, 1984), 49 and GW, I, 103.


system] but evinced by their actions the moral maxims which they could call their very

own. In public as in private and domestic life, every individual was a free man, one who

lived by his own laws. The idea ( Idee ) of his country or of his state was the invisible and

higher reality for which he strove, which impelled him to e�ort; it was the �nal end of his

world or in his eyes the �nal end of the world, an end which he found manifested in the

realities of daily life or which he himself co-operated in manifesting and maintaining.

Confronted by this idea, his own individuality vanished; it was only this idea’s

maintenance, life and persistence he asked for, and these were things which he himself

could make realities. 52

The cultural and historical construction of institutions and laws will be traced at length in

Chapter VI of the Phenomenology— from the ancient world through the French Revolution. And

in Chapter VI, the further we move into the modern and Kantian world, the more it will be the

case that our laws are not seen as our own. In the ancient world, laws were our own—they were

laws of the heart.

The failure of the law of the heart in the modern world leads to the frenzy of self-conceit.

You blame the domination that arises from the law of the heart not on yourself—your heart is

52 Positivity of the Christian Religion , in On Christianity: Early Theological Writings, 154

(italics and parentheses in the text) and GW, I, 367-68.


pure, all you want is the happiness of others. The fact that they do not accept this, the fact that

they see it as domination, is not due to you; it is a general perversion of the law of the heart: 53

The consciousness which sets up the law of its heart therefore meets with resistance from

others, because it contradicts the equally individual laws of their hearts; and these others in

their resistance are doing nothing else but setting up and claiming validity for their own

law. The universal that we have here is, then, only a universal resistance and struggle of all

against one another, in which each claims validity for his own individuality, but at the same

time does not succeed in his e�orts, because each meets with the same resistance from the

others, and is nulli�ed by their reciprocal resistance. What seems to be public order, then,

is this universal state of war, in which each wrests what he can for himself, executes justice

on the individuality of others and establishes his own, which is equally nulli�ed through the

action of the others. It is the 'way of the world', the show of an unchanging course that is

only meant to be a universality … 54

The "Way of the World" or the "Course of the World"—in German, "der Weltlauf"— is a term

that Hegel �nds in Kant. Certainly, Hegel's description of the "Way of the World" is intended

55

53 PhS, 226 and GW, IX, 206. Compare with Kant’s RWLRA, 25, 32-33 and KGS, VI, 30,

37.


55 Kant writes, "Thus we can say that the real things of past time are given in the

transcendental object of experience; but they are objects for me and real in past time only in so far as


to refer to an arrangement central to Kant's political philosophy and philosophy of history.

Compare the above passage from Hegel to the following passage from Kant's Perpetual Peace ,

many say a republic would have to be a nation of angels, because men with their sel�sh

inclinations are not capable of a constitution of such sublime form. But precisely with

these inclinations nature comes to the aid of the general will established on reason, which is

revered even though impotent in practice. Thus it is only a question of a good organization

of the state (which does lie in man's power), whereby the powers of each sel�sh inclination

are so arranged in opposition that one moderates or destroys the ruinous e�ect of the other.

The consequence for reason is the same as if none of them existed, and man is forced to be

a good citizen even if not a morally good person.

The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a

race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is: "Given a multitude of rational

beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined

to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that, although their

I represent to myself (either by the light of history or by the guiding-clues of causes and e�ects) that

a regressive series of possible perceptions in accordance with empirical laws, in a word, that the

course of the world [ der Weltlauf ], conducts us to a past time-series as condition of the present

time—a series which, however, can be represented as actual not in itself but only in the connection of

a possible experience"; CPR, A495; also A450=B478. Also, see MPV, 15 and KGS, VI, 216. Also

see Luther’s translation of the Bible, Ephesians 2:2.


private intentions con�ict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is

the same as if they had no such intentions."

A problem like this must be capable of solution; it does not require that we know how to

attain the moral improvement of men but only that we should know the mechanism of

nature in order to use it on men, organizing the con�ict of the hostile intentions present in a

people in such a way that they must compel themselves to submit to coercive laws. Thus a

state of peace is established in which laws have force.… 56

The assumption of the ancient world was always that in a good city the universal and the

heart (law and morality, on the one hand, and inclination, interest, custom, tradition, on the other)

would agree— Sittlichkeit was the norm. In the modern world, the assumption is the reverse, that

the universal and the heart are separate and will diverge, though the heart can be manipulated so

as to produce the universal. For Kant, the ideal of holiness is that the universal and the heart,

duty and inclination, agree. This ideal is the supreme condition of the highest good—what Hegel

calls the law of the heart. But it is only an ideal and all we end up with is the frenzy of

self-conceit, the organization of a race of devils into the appearance of a nation of angels, public

order that is really a state of war, the reciprocal nulli�cation of con�icting interests appearing as

the universal. At any rate, we have already arrived at the next section: "Virtue and the Way of

the World."

56 Perpetual Peace (hereafter PP ), in On History, ed. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 112-13 and KGS, VIII, 366-67.


IV

The law of the heart, then, dissolves merely into virtue. In other words, the consciousness now

before us no longer takes pleasure in acting on the universal; it no longer combines inclination

and the moral law. It simply does its duty. All we have is ordinary Kantian virtue, and it stands

opposed to the way of the world, the con�ict of particular interests that it intends to manipulate in

order to produce virtuous results. Like Lauer and Hyppolite, many commentators seem to think

that "Virtue and the Way of the World" is about Don Quixote. I think there is a passing

57

reference to Quixote in one passage, but that is not what the section is about. No commentator

58

that I am aware of sees what the section, at least in my opinion, is so very clearly about, namely,

Kant's philosophy of history.

In his "Idea for a Universal History," Kant tells us that there are two forces at work in history.

The �rst is the con�ict of particular interests; the second is morality. And both, for Kant, lead to

the very same end—peace, justice, and a league of nations. 59

57 Lauer, 162-63. J. Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit ,

trans. S. Cherniak and J. Heckman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 290.

58 PhS, 231 and GW, IX, 210.

59 "Idea for a Universal History" (hereafter IUH ), in On History, 18-19 and KGS , VIII,

24-25. PP, 112-13 and KGS , VIII, 366-67. Also, see my earlier treatment of these matters in Marx

and Modern Political Theory (hereafter M&MPT ) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little�eld, 1993),

Chapters 4-5.


Kant thinks that we �nd two propensities within human beings. He sums these up as

"unsocial sociability." Human beings have an unsocial propensity—a propensity to sel�shness

and lack of concern for the interests of others. But they also have a social propensity. They must

cooperate with others in society to satisfy their needs. These two propensities

together—associating with others, yet being sel�sh and unsocial—produce con�ict, competition,

and even war. While there is an obvious negative side to this con�ict, there is also a positive

side. Con�ict and sel�shness, after all, drive us to accomplish things; competition sharpens our

abilities. We are driven toward the development of our powers, capacities, and talents. 60

So, for Kant, we are driven to society by sociability and the need for others. Once in society,

competition and sel�shness set in and our powers and capacities develop. This development, for

Kant, will eventually lead to the society of morality, justice, and peace that he is after. The

61

notion that con�icting self-interest leads toward what morality demands is quite similar to, and

perhaps Kant even gets it from, Adam Smith. In a market economy, each pursues their own

self-interest. Nevertheless, for Smith, this self-seeking not only produces a common good, it

does so more e�ectively than if individuals had consciously and cooperatively sought the

common good. Aggressive self-seeking, given the interdependence of each upon all, produces a

national capital, the wealth of the nation, that common good , out of which each struggles to gain

60 IUH, 15 and KGS, VIII, 20-21.

61 Ibid. PP, 106, 111 and KGS, VIII, 360-61, 365.


their particular share. Self-seeking produces this common good through an "invisible hand"; that

is, behind our backs and despite our intentions. 62

For Kant, there is also an "unsocial sociability" at the international level. We �nd the

assertion of national self-interest that drives nations toward aggression and war. Yet there is also

an important form of sociability among nations, namely, their interest in commerce and trade. It

is the dynamic interplay between these factors that will lead to a league of nations, peace, and

international law.

As wars become more serious, destructive, and expensive, they become more uncertain.

They come into con�ict with ever-increasing economic interests—they interfere with trade. As

world trade grows, as nations become more interdependent, war poses an ever-greater threat to

the smooth functioning of the international market. At the �rst sign of war, other nations will

intervene to arbitrate, to quash the war, in order to secure their own national commercial

interests. This is the �rst step toward a league of nations. 63

The second force at work in history is morality. We can easily see that morality, the

categorical imperative, would demand fair laws, just constitutions, and an end to wars. We could

not will to universalize war, unjust constitutions, and unfair laws. Morality would also demand a

league of nations. And morality, for Kant, is one of the forces at work in history. Moreover, the

64

other force, we have already seen, drives us toward the very same point that morality does. War

62 A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan (New York: Modern Library, 1937), 423.

63 IUH, 23 and KGS, VIII, 28. PP, 114 and KGS, VIII, 368.

64 PP, 100 and KGS, VIII, 356.


among nations and commercial interest drive us toward peace, law, and a league of nations. Both

morality and war converge toward the same end. 65

In the long passage quoted above from Perpetual Peace, we see a good example of these two

forces at work. Kant argues that sel�sh inclinations must be arranged so that they cancel each

other out and thus devils can end up with a society that might have seemed possible only for

those with the morality of angels. Both forces are necessary for Kant. One without the other is

not enough. Reason and morality alone, he says, would never achieve our end. Humans are too

corrupt. On the other hand, con�ict or war alone will never actually make us moral. Con�ict

66

and war drive us toward peace and legality. But this is only to say that our self-interest drives us

toward peace and law; and self-interest is not moral for Kant.

If, for Kant, we are able to form an idea for a universal history; if we can see that in history

the dynamic tension between war and commerce will lead us unconsciously toward the same

point that reason and morality would consciously lead us; then Kant thinks that the second force

at work in history, our own reason, our own morality, can begin to guide this historical

development toward its goal. History can be rationally guided. We can have providence,

not

67 68

just fate.

65 IUH, 18-19 and KGS, VIII, 24-25. PP, 111-13 and KGS, VIII, 365-67.

66 IUH, 17-18 and KGS, VIII, 23.

67 IUH, 22 and KGS, VIII, 27.

68 IUH, 25 and KGS, VIII, 30.


Hegel clearly has Kantian morality and philosophy of history in mind as he plays out the

interaction between the two consciousnesses that stand before us: virtue and the way of the

world. Virtue, he says, is the consciousness that universal law is essential and that

69

individuality—which is to say, inclination and particular interest—must be sacri�ced to the

universal and thus brought under its discipline and control. Virtue wills to accomplish a good

that is not yet actual; it is an ought that must be realized. And it can be realized only through

virtue's nullifying of individuality. In the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, Kant says that the

70

“moral capacity of man would not be virtue if it were not actualized by the strength of one’s

resolution in con�ict with powerful opposing inclinations. Virtue is the product of pure practical

reason insofar as the latter, in the consciousness of its superiority (through freedom), gains

mastery over the inclinations.” He also says you must “dare to do battle against all the forces of

71

nature within you and round about you, and to conquer them when they come into con�ict with

your moral principles.” 72

For the way of the world, on the other hand, individuality takes itself to be essential—which

is to say that it pursues self-interest. It seeks its own inclinations, pleasures, and enjoyment, and

in doing so it subordinates the universal to itself. For Kant, as we saw, both morality and the

con�ict of particular interests converge toward the same universal end. So also, Hegel says, the

69 Hegel was also in�uenced by Adam Smith and James Steuart. For a fuller treatment of these

matters, see my M&MPT, 123-30, 149-50 n.36.

70 PhS, 228-30 and GW, IX, 208-10.

71 MPV, 145 and KGS, VI, 477.

72 MPV, 152; see also 64-65, 67-68 and KGS, VI, 483, 405, 408.


way of the world, through the con�ict of particular interests, achieves the universal—the very

same universal that virtue seeks. For Kant, it was morality's task to guide the historical con�ict

73

of particular interests and to hasten it toward its end. For Hegel too, virtue attempts to assist the

way of the world to realize the universal.

At this point, however, Hegel's disagreement with Kant begins to sharpen. Hegel argues that,

in fact, virtue's assistance is unnecessary; the way of the world is quite capable of realizing the

universal on its own. The Quixotic assistance of the knight of virtue is a sham. Virtue wants to

74

bring the good into existence by the sacri�ce of individuality or particular interest. But it is

individuality, the con�ict of particular interests, that actually realizes the universal. Virtue denies

the accomplishments of the way of the world and attempts to claim them for itself. Virtue always

wants to treat the universal as something that does not yet exist, something that ought to be ,

something it will bring about, rather than as something which already is. Sittlichkeit is emerging

here. Hegel says:

Virtue in the ancient world had its own de�nite sure meaning, for it had in the spiritual

substance of the nation a foundation full of meaning, and for its purpose an actual good

already in existence. Consequently, too, it was not directed against the actual world as

against something generally perverted, and against a 'way of the world'. But the virtue we

73 PhS, 228-29, 235 and GW, IX, 208-9, 213.

74 PhS, 230-32 and GW, IX, 209-11.


are considering has its being outside of the spiritual substance, it is an unreal virtue, a

virtue in imagination and name only, which lacks that substantial content. 75

For Hegel, we must drop the idea that virtue exists only as a principle, an ought, which as yet

has no actual existence and which must be brought into existence through the sacri�ce of

individuality, particular interest, or passion. Hegel's objection to Kantian morality is that it is

abstract, outside the world, an ought, and that it believes that only it is capable of realizing the

universal. It has severed itself from the concrete actual world of interest and passion, and faces

76

it as an other. From this superior position it wants to direct the world. Instead, morality must be

rooted in the world.

Or, to put this another way, Kant's philosophy of history and his ethics are written from the

perspective of individual consciousness—the perspective that there are only individual

consciousnesses. Morality, for Kant, is a matter of individual will abstracted from the concrete

actual world. Certainly, for Kant, inclinations, interests, and passions are part of the world and

are to be carefully distinguished from the individual moral will if the individual is to be

self-determined and thus free. It is this separation that Hegel objects to. It involves the “creation

of distinctions that are no distinctions … “ Kant has no notion of Sittlichkeit , which Hegel is

77

trying to push us towards here. Sittlichkeit is morality embedded in a concrete cultural world.

For Hegel, virtue and the way of the world, particular interest and the universal, morality and the

75 PhS, 234 (italics in text) and GW, IX, 212-13.

76 PhS, 235 and GW, IX, 213.

77 PhS, 234 and GW, IX, 212.


concrete world, are not separate opposed realities externally related to each other. They are

internally related as parts of a single cultural reality that already exists; it is not something that

merely ought to be realized.

We must abandon the perspective of individual consciousness and adopt a perspective in

which the concrete world and individual consciousness are seen as two parts of one spiritual

unity. Individual consciousness is the internalization of the sociocultural world and the

sociocultural world is the outcome and expression of the actions of individual consciousnesses.

Each develops in interaction with the other, and each transforms the other.

Hegel agrees with the Kantian and Smithian notion that a con�ict of particular interests leads

to the universal. What Hegel does not accept is that this can be adequately understood at the

level of individual consciousness. For it to be correctly understood, we must move to the level of

culture. Culture explains how individual interest—the concrete way of the world—is connected

to virtue. The interaction among particular interests gives rise to a set of institutions, a world,

which develops a spiritual life of its own and which reacts back upon and molds those individual

consciousnesses and leads them to virtue. Particular interest and virtue are not two externally

related realms eternally distinguished from each other. They are internally related as two

interacting parts within a single cultural unity. Each produces and molds the other. Virtue is

simply mistaken in thinking itself independent and outside this spiritual reality, superior to it, and

thus able to manipulate and guide particular interests from above. Particular interests as they are

formed by their cultural world actually take an interest in virtue and virtue is something that

properly engages and develops out of our passions, inclinations, and interests. Moreover, there is

no ought that is above, outside, independent and that the individual will must set out to realize.


Morality already exists as the spiritual unity that encloses us, that is our very being, and that is

embedded in our feelings, desires, and interests. Hegel's task is to reconcile us to what is by

allowing us to correctly understand what is. His aim is not to transform reality in accordance

with an abstract and independent ought. Virtue is not something as yet nonexistent that we ought

to realize; it is something already existing that we must come to more deeply recognize and

rationally grasp in our actual sociocultural practices. As Hegel puts it in the Philosophy of Right,

After all, the truth about Right, Ethics, and the state is as old as its public recognition and

formulation in the law of the land, in the morality of everyday life, and in religion. What

more does this truth require—since the thinking mind is not content to possess it in this

ready fashion? It requires to be grasped in thought as well; the content which is already

rational in principle must win the form of rationality … 78

At any rate, Kantian practical reason ends in failure. It thinks it can direct the course of the

world, but it turns out that this is self-delusion. The course of the world does better than does

virtue.

V

"Virtue and the Way of the World," then, achieves a universal end brought about by the action of

particular interests. What this shows us, Hegel suggests in the next section, entitled "The

78 PR, 3 (italics in text), 11-12 and SW, VII, 22, 35-36.


Spiritual Animal Kingdom and Deceit, or the Fact Itself," is that action can only be judged by

79

what it does. Only the action achieved is a reality, not the idea that is supposed to guide the

action from above or outside. We cannot determine the reality of the action until it takes

place—we cannot see the universal moral result in the particular interests until the con�icting

particular interests have actually realized the universal. The reality of any potentiality, capacity,

or talent is its realization, not what we hope or desire or intend, but what becomes, what is

actually realized in action. The talent of engineers or artists is seen in the bridges they build or

the paintings they paint, not merely in their hopes, dreams, or intentions concerning possible

bridges or paintings. 80

In an earlier section, Hegel discussed physiognomy, the doctrine propounded by Lavater to

the e�ect that the inner character of individuals is expressed outwardly in their bodily form and

facial expressions. If we wonder why Hegel spent so much time attacking what to most people is

obviously a pseudoscience, part of the answer is that Hegel's attack against physiognomy hits at

much more than just physiognomy—it hits at Kant's ethics as well. Physiognomy regards the

deed and its performance as inessential and irrelevant. It regards only inner intentions as

essential and thinks it can discern these inner truths through, say, facial expressions. 81

Physiognomy pushes this way too far. As Hegel puts it, "'If anyone said, "You certainly act like

79 Miller translates "die Sache selbst" as the "'matter in hand' itself," or elsewhere as the "heart

of the matter." I think a better translation is simply "the fact itself."

80 PhS, 239-40 and GW, IX, 217-18. See also, L, 253 and SW, VII, 314. PR, 83 and SW,

VII, 182. Also Wood, 137-39, 143, 151.

81 PhS, 191-92 and GW, IX, 176-77.


an honest man, but I see from your face that you are forcing yourself to do so and are a rogue at

heart"; without a doubt, every honest fellow to the end of time, when thus addressed, will retort

with a box on the ear.'" 82

But how far from this is Kant, who in the Foundations says, "when moral worth is in

question, it is not a matter of actions which one sees but of their inner principles which one does

not see." How is it, then, that we can be sure of these inner intentions? Well, that is something

83

of a problem even for Kant,

if we attend to our experience of the way men act, we meet frequent and, as we ourselves

confess, justi�ed complaints that we cannot cite a single sure example of the disposition to

act from pure duty.… It is in fact absolutely impossible by experience to discern with

complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action, however much it may

conform to duty, rested solely on moral grounds and on the conception of one's duty. It

sometimes happens that in the most searching self-examination we can �nd nothing except

the moral ground of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that

good action and to such great sacri�ce. But from this we cannot by any means conclude

with certainty that a secret impulse of self-love, falsely appearing as the idea of duty, was

not actually the true determining cause of the will.… our concern is not whether this or that

was done but that reason of itself and independently of all appearances commands what

ought to be done. Our concern is with actions of which perhaps the world has never had an

82 PhS, 193 and GW, IX, 178.

83 F, 23 and KGS, IV, 407.


example, with actions whose feasibility might be seriously doubted by those who base

everything on experience, and yet with actions inexorably commanded by reason. 84

This simply will not work. How are we to establish the existence of the sort of intelligible

self that could ground such pure intentions, unsullied by self-love, of which the world has

perhaps never seen an example, but which are inexorably commanded by reason? If we accepted

the existence of a noumenal realm that could keep reason and its pure intentions apart in a

beyond where they could be considered an inner essence behind the outer appearance of

self-love, we might begin to argue for the existence of such an intelligible self. But Hegel will

not concede the existence of such a realm and, indeed, most modern commentators �nd the very

concept to be an embarrassment which they either ignore or avoid. We might instead try to argue

that without such an intelligible self and the freedom it implies, we could not understand the

possibility of morality. But Hegel has just shown us that this is not so. We do not need a virtue

85

to direct the course of the world. The particular interests that make up the course of the world

are quite able on their own to realize the universal. Furthermore, by Kant’s own admission in the

passage just quoted, we cannot even cite a single sure example of an action done from pure duty.

How then can we claim to establish that there is or must be an intelligible self, the seat of a

84 F, 22-24 and KGS, IV, 406-8. Also, see CPR, A551=B579. For Kant, in the Critique of

Judgment, the ideal of artistic beauty requires the visible expression in bodily form of the moral

ideas that rule us inwardly; Critique of Judgment , trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1966), 72

and KGS, V, 235.

85 As, for example, F, 63-81 and KGS, IV, 444-62.


reason that of itself and independently of all appearances is able to issue inexorable commands of

pure duty?

All we have is a deed, a doing, an action. There is no self residing inside us in a beyond or in

a second world or that somehow escapes the supposed heteronomy of the phenomenal world. All

we have here, as Hegel puts it, is a distinction that is no distinction—a distinction that is purely

nominal. 86

For Hegel, there is no way to get a hold of inner intentions—certainly not if that is supposed

to allow us to measure or critique or avoid the deed. The deed is not a mere outer expression of

an inner intention. The deed is what it is: murder, theft, bravery. It is what can be said of it. We

should not fancy that we are something else than what we have done. We should not explain

away our deed by appeal to intentions—something "meant," something conjectured. What we

are, our essence, is the work we have done. 87

Let us say, then, that action is a self-expression—not of a transcendental self, but simply the

expression or realization of a capacity or talent—and that this is the way we must understand

individuality. The self or the individual is simply what is expressed, what is realized, in the

action or work. The self is not some mysterious entity behind or beyond its action. We cannot

appeal to an inner self to measure the deed. That would be to go beyond the essential nature of

the work which is simply to be the realization of a potential. It will follow from this that there is

no room even for exaltation, lamentation, or repentance over the work. Any of this would be to

presuppose a self-in-itself that was, or might have been, or that failed to be, realized. But there is

86 PhS, 233-34 and GW, IX, 212.

87 PhS, 194, 191 and GW, IX, 178-79, 176-77.


no such self-in-itself. The original nature or potential of the individual can be nothing but what

actually gets carried out, expressed, realized in the world. We cannot lament that our work does

not live up to our potential. Our potential is nothing but what we are able to realize in our work.

The individual is what the individual actually does, not what they merely hope, dream, or intend.

This is a view that academics are not likely to �nd congenial. We are all deeply convinced

88

that we are capable of far more and much greater work than we ever turn out. Such is our

self-delusion. There is no room for a Kantian self-in-itself behind or beyond or distinguished

from what is actually realized.

In one of the examples that Kant gives of a moral act in the Foundations, he discusses

talents. Hegel, I suggest, is arguing that Kant's treatment of talents is seriously �awed. Kant

asks if the moral law could allow us to will to leave a useful talent undeveloped, and concludes

that it will not allow us to do so. We cannot universalize not developing such a talent. The

categorical imperative demands that we develop such talents. In the Metaphysical Principles of 89

Virtue, Kant says that we have a duty to cultivate our natural powers, capacities, and

endowments. 90

The moral law, then, commands us to take as our end the realization of such speci�c talents.

For Hegel this is simply incoherent. It is impossible to determine what this end might be before

it has actually been realized. What talent I might have, what my potential might be, can only be

88 PhS, 241-42 and GW, IX, 219-20.

89 F, 40-41 and KGS, IV, 422-23. See also Onora (formerly Nell) O’Neill, Acting on

Principle: An Essay on Kantian Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 84-89.

90 MPV, 44, 108 and KGS, VI, 386-87, 444.


discovered in what I am �nally able to make real through action. Do I have the potential to write

a book that is truly a masterpiece and thus would have a moral obligation to keep at it until I

actually produce that book? Or do I merely have the potential to write a few valuable and

interesting things and when I have done so would best be advised to move on to another topic?

Or is it the case that my talent really lies in a completely di�erent �eld altogether and that I am

wasting my time in writing. You cannot know what your end is, what your talent is, what

potential you have until you have actually carried it out.

Bernard Williams tells a story of a Gauguin-like �gure who while concerned with the de�nite

and pressing human claims made upon him and what is involved in their being neglected

nevertheless turns away from them in order to realize his gifts as a painter and to pursue his art.

This involves a good deal of risk. Whether or not he succeeds in developing this gift, whether he

actually has a signi�cant gift, he cannot tell for sure ahead of time. Thus, whether his action can

be justi�ed depends, certainly in part, on whether he actually has and is �nally able to develop

this gift. Any justi�cation, then, will at least in part have to be retrospective. But for Kant the

91

categorical imperative would certainly seem to require that we know and will our end ahead of

time. We must act on a maxim—a maxim that we formulate, analyze, and �nd to be

universalizable ahead of time. If we do not have such a rational principle to act upon, our act

will be heteronomous, at the whim of the way of the world—not free or moral. However, Allison

argues that:

91 B. Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981), 21-24.


since maxims are self-imposed rules, one cannot make something one’s maxim without in

some sense being aware of it as such, or at least without the capacity to become aware of

it.… This does not entail, however, either that we possess a “Cartesian certainty” regarding

our motivation (which Kant, of course, denies) or that we must explicitly formulate our

maxims to ourselves before acting. The point is rather a conceptual one: namely, that I

cannot act on a principle (according to the conception of law) without an awareness of that

principle, although I need not be explicitly aware of myself as acting on that principle.

Moreover, it must be possible in subsequent re�ection to discover and articulate (albeit not

in an indefeasible way) the maxims on which one acts … 92

But where we cannot know ahead of time what our potential, our talent, and thus our end is,

it does not make sense to say that in subsequent re�ection we could discover and articulate the

92 Allison, 90 (italics in the text). This may well lead to trouble. Later in the text, Allison

discusses actions that are motivated both by duty and by inclination. He argues that it is a mistake to

take Kant as holding that motives or incentives are psychic forces that operate either singly or in

cooperation. For Kant, motives or incentives determine the will only if taken up into a maxim

(Allison, 117). Let us imagine individuals who are trying to decide whether they were determined

by duty or inclination and who did not formulate their maxim before acting. Recall that Kant

himself claims that generally speaking we can never be certain whether we were motivated by duty

or inclination. Can we simply and unproblematically accept what is discovered and articulated upon

subsequent re�ection concerning the maxims on which such individuals acted? Can we know what

was taken up into a maxim if no maxim was explicitly formulated?


maxim on which we acted. If it was not possible to formulate a speci�c maxim in the �rst place,

it would not be possible to discover and articulate one in retrospect. Instead of speci�c maxims,

Kant seems to have in mind all-purpose maxims to the e�ect that we should realize whatever

useful talents we might have,

No principle of reason prescribes exactly how far one must go in this e�ort.… Besides, the

variety of circumstances which men may encounter makes quite optional the choice of the

kind of occupation for which one should cultivate his talent. There is here, therefore, no

law of reason for actions but only for the maxim of actions, viz., “Cultivate your powers of

mind and body so as to be able to ful�ll all the ends which may arise for you, uncertain as

you may be which ends might become your own.” 93

However, such all-purpose maxims tell us nothing whatsoever about what it is moral to do in any

speci�c case because we cannot know where our talent lies or how much talent we have in any

speci�c area. The categorical imperative cannot tell me whether I should keep working toward a

masterpiece, switch topics often, or give up writing altogether?

Furthermore, all of this presents problems for the second formulation of the categorical

imperative. If it is a duty to "treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another,

always as an end and never as a means only”, and if as a consequence of this we have a duty to

94

93 MPV, 50-51 and KGS, VI, 392.

94 F, 47 and KGS, IV, 429.


develop our powers, capacities, and talents, then we are in trouble. If we cannot know what our

95

talents are ahead of time, and if to treat humanity as an end requires that we develop our talents

and those of others, then we will not know how to act in these cases. Again, we cannot give in to

Kantian virtue’s claim that it must be put in charge, that it can survey the whole terrain, that it

will foresee what must be done, either to direct the way of the world or even to develop our

talents by way of treating humanity as an end. Virtue must instead take a very di�erent stance. It

must deal with what is, with actuality, with what has already been actualized. As Williams

suggests, it is largely retrospective. We cannot simply and easily look ahead to what Kantian

virtue claims ought to be realized.

What do we do then? Well, Hegel thinks real people just act. And he thinks Kant well

knows they do. Indeed, in his "Idea for a Universal History," Kant takes a very di�erent

approach to the development of talents. He holds that it is simply self-interest that causes our

talents to develop. As in Adam Smith's model of a market society, competing particular interests

force the development of powers, capacities, and talents. Sel�shness awakens our powers and

stirs us out of complacency. It moves us to action, drives us to accomplish things, and develops

our potential. The way of the world and not virtue is what develops our talents. 96

Hegel, I suggest, thinks that Kant's approach in the Foundations is senseless and that the

view Kant presents in his "Idea for a Universal History" is correct. Within a set of

circumstances, our interests are formed; they lead us to action; and we realize a potential. At

97

95 MPV, 50-51 and KGS, VI, 392.

96 IUH, 15-16 and KGS, VIII, 20-21.

97 PhS, 240 and GW, IX, 218.


the same time, Hegel is trying to develop his own view, namely, that acting, the development of

talents, is an objecti�cation of the self. Only the public product, only the result, is the realization

of the talent. So also the objecti�ed talent or product (the bridge or painting) must be recognized

by others. An unrecognized product means a non-objective, non-real talent—merely your own

subjective opinion that you have a talent. A talent that will never be recognized is not a real

talent. 98

We are headed for a crisis here. There is nothing to sustain a Kantian self-in-itself. We must

give up the notion of a transcendental self grounded in a beyond; we must abandon the notion of

a self that is supposed to have powers and talents that it should, but may or may not, realize.

There is no such self. It is only in and through the actual realization of powers, capacities, and

talents that a self emerges. The self emerges in its objecti�cations. A self becomes real insofar

as it objecti�es itself and is recognized. Our problem here is that at the level of individual

consciousness the objecti�cations of the self cannot gain adequate recognition.

What we have, then, are works in which individuals have objecti�ed their powers, capacities,

and talents, but which are ephemeral and unreal because other individuals �nd them

unimportant—not their expression, realization, or objecti�cation—and thus do not recognize

them. At this point, Hegel begins to take up the notion of "die Sache selbst"— the fact itself.

99

Hyppolite suggests that Hegel is distinguishing between a thing of perception ( Ding ) and a thing

98 PhS, 111 and GW, IX, 109. It is certainly possible for real talent to go unrecognized, for

artists, say, to be ahead of their time, but to hold that a talent that will never be able to gain

recognition is still a talent, is simply self-delusion.

99 PhS, 245-46 and GW, IX, 223.


of spirit or culture, a human thing ( Sache ). The point that Hegel wants to move toward, I

100

believe, is that facts are sociocultural constructions. Individuals act, express, objectify

themselves (their powers and capacities) in a work. This is what constitutes facts. Facts are

constructs, creations, interpretations. Individual activity creates them through work, scholarship,

research, experiment, production, and so forth. Reality is a spiritual-cultural substance formed

by individual action or work.

Take the fact that "Augustus was an Emperor of Rome." This might seem to be just a simple

independently given fact. But Rome, its political institutions, and its emperors were historical

realities constructed by Romans. Without this historical construction, there would be no Rome,

no Roman emperors, and no Augustus. For the statement "Augustus was an Emperor of Rome"

to have anything beyond the most trivial meaning, we must understand what Rome was, what its

political institutions were, and what an emperor was. And to gain this understanding would

require interpretation—interpretation that we could argue about and disagree over. At a certain

point, our interpretations of our constructions may crystallize into what looks like a simple

independently given fact—the fact itself—but that is because our di�erences have paled and we

have come to take these interpretations and constructions for granted.

At this point in Chapter V, then, actuality—all that is actual—is now identi�ed with the

action or expression of individuals. The actual world is the action of all individuals expressing

their talents and objectifying their powers in works or acts. Consciousness (at least for us) now

100 Baillie's translation is clearer here: Phenomenology of Mind (hereafter PhM ), trans. J.B.

Baillie (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 431 and GW, IX, 223; for Miller's translation, see PhS,

246. Hyppolite, 309.


knows that it constitutes its world. In working on reality, in forming it as a product, in expressing

and objectifying our powers and talents, through research, experiment, work, and so forth, reality

is constituted by us.

The problem remaining here is that we are still at the level of individual consciousness and

thus each individual only recognizes itself in the object and only takes its own objects to be

signi�cant. Others do not recognize your object nor you theirs. What Hegel calls Honest

Consciousness responds to this by holding that even if it did not bring a purpose to reality, did

not accomplish anything that others would recognize, did not build a bridge or paint a painting,

but tried, “at least willed it,” well, that is good enough. Honest Consciousness is consoled.

Even failure was an attempt. As for Kant, this consciousness is not motivated by results,

101

consequences, or the actual realization of purposes. Its concern is with its attempt, its

102

intention, and the fact itself.

But this leads to deceit. Honest Kantian consciousness is not as honest as it claims. Honest

Consciousness would claim not to be concerned with accomplishments and recognition but

simply with the fact itself and with trying hard—and, indeed, this too is the way others regard it.

They assume that the real issue is the work, the fact itself, regardless of who accomplished it. As

long as we all really tried, it does not matter who actually made the scienti�c discovery or who

gets the recognition. Only the discovery itself really matters. Only the advance of science

matters to Honest Consciousness—not its own accomplishment or recognition. Or so it would

seem, until anyone tries to question Honest Consciousness's accomplishment. Just see what

101 PhS, 247-48 (italics in text) and GW, IX, 224-25.

102 F, 10 and KGS, IV, 394.


happens if you try to point out to Honest Consciousness that in fact you had already made this

scienti�c discovery earlier, or even if you claim credit for signi�cantly assisting in the discovery.

You will begin to see that Honest Consciousness has left the position where it claimed to be and

we all thought it was. It is really Honest Consciousness's own doing that concerns it—not

merely the fact itself. Honest Consciousness wants the credit for making the discovery itself.

And when others come to see that this is Honest Consciousness's real intent, they feel deceived.

However, their own haste to assist demonstrated just as much that their real concern was not

merely the fact itself either but their own desire to be in on the discovery themselves and to be

recognized for it . They wanted to deceive in just the way they complain of being deceived. 103

Consciousness is not interested in the fact itself regardless of who expresses it.

We might compare this to Kant, who, in explaining the fourth formulation of the categorical

imperative in the Foundations , argues that if we were only subject to moral laws, it would be

possible to attach ourselves to them out of self-interest—we could be motivated to obey or

disobey the law out of self-interest. But if we act as a supreme legislator, as we must, this

becomes impossible. If we were to let our interest predominate, we would be subordinating the

law (and our legislation of the law) to this interest. As legislators, then, we would not be

supreme. The law would not be supreme. Our interest would be. If we are to act as a supreme

legislator, then interest must go. 104

Hegel, we must conclude, thinks this is deceptive. Whether or not the supreme legislator is

motivated by self-interest in the sense that Kant has in mind is not the real issue because what the

103 PhS, 250 and GW, IX, 226-27; however, I prefer Baillie's translation, PhM, 435-36.

104 F, 50-51 and KGS, IV, 432-33.


supreme legislator is very de�nitely interested in is being the supreme legislator, the one who

issues the moral law. The supreme legislator is as much or more interested in its supremacy as it

is in the categorical imperative itself. What consciousness is interested in is its own doing.

Honest Consciousness is not interested in the fact itself apart from the fact that it came up with

the fact itself. Others are the same way. If they seek to assist you, they do so to get their own

piece of the action. There is a deception here. They are not simply assisting you, but trying to

manifest their own action and trying to take credit for your action. And you behave in the same

way toward them.

However, it would be a mistake to think that there is something perverse about Honest

Consciousness. Hegel is not trying to suggest that its behavior is anything but the perfectly

normal behavior of consciousness in general. If consciousness confronts any sort of truth, work,

fact, or object that is other, it has a drive to deny its otherness and claim it as its own. We can

�nd consciousness doing this throughout the Phenomenology. The master claims the slave as

his own; idealism claims reality as its own; consciousness even claims to have constructed God.

Hegel's point here, I believe, is that it is a mistake to think that consciousness can or should be

concerned only with objectivity, truth, the fact itself. Consciousness, just as much, and rightfully

so, is concerned with its own doing, its involvement, its expression, its construction, its interest.

As early as the "Positivity of the Christian Religion," Hegel says that we take an interest in a

thing only if we can be active in its behalf. Kantian practical reason neglects this important

105

and real side of consciousness. Practical reason, for Kant, cannot legitimately relate to the moral

law out of interest. Practical reason must attend to the fact itself—the moral law as an abstract

105 Positivity of the Christian Religion, 164 and GW, I, 376.


universal. Kantian practical reason is unable to give interest and the desire for recognition a

signi�cant place. We cannot act morally without subordinating our interest; we cannot act

morally from interest. Kantian morality is unable to satisfy this other legitimate side of

consciousness. Hegel's point is that Sittlichkeit will be able to do so.

And so what we have as long as we remain at the level of individual consciousness is chaos.

Each individual both wants credit for their construction, discovery, or work, yet pretends to be

concerned only with the fact itself and not their own doing, until others, as they naturally will,

begin to point out their role in the work or try to take a role by assisting, at which point the fact

itself becomes much less important than the fact that it is your own work.

Well, what if Honest Consciousness decides that it does not care about the fact itself; what if

it claims that the only thing that interests it is its own action, its own contribution, its own

work—and nothing else? Well, this will not succeed either. Our own expression, e�ort, or work

simply becomes meaningless, becomes nothing, unless the fact itself is of some signi�cance—of

some public signi�cance. If your work is incapable of gaining any recognition, then it will do

no good for Honest Consciousness to insist that all it cares about is its own work. If this work, if

the fact itself, is insigni�cant and meaningless, then Honest Consciousness has done no real

work. Both sides—your own work and the public signi�cance of the fact itself—are essential.

106

106 This is not to say that signi�cant work never goes unrecognized. A work that is signi�cant

and deserving of recognition can fail to gain that recognition. But from this we cannot conclude that

public recognition should be dismissed altogether and that all an Honest Consciousness need be


We cannot, then, explain action simply by intention. To retreat too far into the inner life is

not only to try to elude responsibility for consequences, as Pippin puts it, but it is also to strip

107

action of any meaning. Kenneth Westphal makes a point that is worth noting in this context.

Practical reason is inseparable from social practice. It is true that actions are carried out by

individuals, but such actions are possible and only have meaning in so far as they participate in

sociocultural practices. There are two important questions here, Westphal suggests: (1) are

individuals the only bearers of psychological states, and (2) can psychological states be

understood in individual terms? Individualists answer both questions in the a�rmative, and most

holists answer both questions in the negative. Hegel, however, answers the �rst question

a�rmatively and the second negatively. In other words, it is only individuals who act, have

108

intentions, construct facts, and so forth. Nevertheless, such acts, intentions, and facts cannot be

understood apart from sociocultural practices—their meaning can only be understood as

interpreted in a sociocultural context.

If that is the case, then as soon as we turn to the self and attempt to understand the individual

subject, we will �nd that it too cannot be understood apart from sociocultural practices. It too

can only be understood as interpreted within a sociocultural context. While we do have

individual subjects, for Hegel, we will �nd that we will not be able to hold on to the notion of a

concerned with is its own work. Its work amounts to nothing unless it deserves recognition.

Recognition is essential here.

107 Pippin, 206-7.

108 K.R. Westphal, Hegel's Epistemological Realism: A Study of the Aim and Method of

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 176.


subject that is radically distinct from other subjects, that can stand above or outside the world,

that thus could be the source of a virtue that could guide the way of the world, that could be a

supreme legislator, or that could be committed purely to the fact itself. In short, we do not have a

Kantian subject, a subject that could alone be the source of a categorical imperative. Instead, we

will have to develop a di�erent conception of a subject—one embedded in a context of cultural

practices, meanings, objecti�cations, and recognition.

VI

In the �nal two sections of Chapter V, "Reason as Lawgiver" and "Reason as Testing Laws," we

take up an analysis of Kant's categorical imperative that is direct and explicit enough to be clear

to all readers. Here we have a Kantian consciousness, a supreme lawgiver, that takes itself to be

absolute, universal, and authoritative. It would claim to be the true and absolute ethical

109

authority, but Hegel will try to show us that it is not, that this is only possible if we move to

Sittlichkeit, and that all that Kant can give us is the same old Honest Consciousness who really

tries but always fails. 110

At any rate, for Kant, practical reason claims to know immediately what is right and good

and to be able to issue determinate laws accordingly. As Kant puts it in the Metaphysical

Principles of Virtue,

109 PhS, 252-53 and GW, IX, 228-29.

110 PhS, 259 and GW, IX, 234.


An imperative is a practical rule by which an action, in itself contingent, is made

necessary.… a rule whose representation makes a subjectively contingent action necessary

and therefore represents the subject as one who must be constrained (necessitated) to

conform to this rule. The categorical (unconditional) imperative is one that does not

command mediately … but immediately, through the mere representation of this action

itself (its form), which is thought through the categorical imperative as objectively

necessary … 111

Let us see if Kantian practical reason can, as it claims, give us laws that make subjectively

contingent actions objective, immediate, unconditional, and necessary. Let us take an example of

such a law: "'Everyone ought to speak the truth.'" Well, as Hegel points out, the condition

112

will at once have to be admitted: if you know the truth. The law, then, would have to be stated:

everyone ought to speak the truth in so far as they know it. But,

with this admission, it in fact admits that already, in the very act of saying the

commandment, it really violates it. It said: everyone ought to speak the truth; but it

meant: he ought to speak it according to his knowledge and conviction; that is to say, what

it said was di�erent from what it meant; and to speak otherwise than one means, means not

speaking the truth. The untruth or inapt expression in its improved form now runs:

everyone ought to speak the truth according to his knowledge and conviction at the time.

111 MPV, 21-22 and KGS, VI, 222.

112 PhS, 254 and GW, IX, 229.


But with this correction, what the proposition wanted to enunciate as universally necessary

and intrinsically valid, has really turned round into something completely contingent. For

speaking the truth is made contingent on whether I can know it, and can convince myself of

it; and the proposition says nothing more than that a confused muddle of truth and

falsehood ought to be spoken just as anyone happens to know, mean, and understand it. 113

We do not have anything unconditional, necessary, or objective here, but merely good old

Honest Consciousness still trying its subjective best. We might further change the proposition by

adding that the truth ought to be known, but then we would contradict our original assumption

that practical reason knows the truth immediately. We would be admitting that it does not

actually know what is true—it merely ought to know it. This is not unconditional and objective

morality; it is merely subjective and intended.

Take the commandment: "'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'" Such love would at least

114

require, Hegel suggests, that we work to remove evil and do good for our neighbor. And that

would mean that to love my neighbor intelligently I would have to know what is good and bad.

Unintelligent love might well do my neighbor harm. We are slipping toward the subjectivity of

Honest Consciousness again. At any rate, Hegel argues that the agency most capable of avoiding

evil and accomplishing intelligent good for my neighbor would be the just state, in comparison to

which what any single individual is likely to accomplish is minimal. Furthermore, the action of

113 PhS, 254 (italics in text) and GW, IX, 230. Also, MPV, 90-92 and KGS, VI, 429-30.

114 PhS, 255 and GW, IX, 230. MPV, 60-61, 113-23, 149 and KGS, VI, 401-2, 448-58,

480-81.


the state is so pervasive that if I as an individual in trying to bene�t my neighbor were to oppose

the state in a way that was either intended to be criminal or (like the friends of Honest

Consciousness) was simply an attempt to cheat the state of its due credit in order to claim it for

myself, such action would most likely be frustrated and rendered useless. While there is room

for individual bene�cence in single, isolated, contingent situations, generally speaking, the

socio-cultural-political world is such a pervasive power that doing good of the sort that Kant

envisions, that is, the doing good of an autonomous individual consciousness, certainly cannot

realistically be demanded necessarily and unconditionally. Such action is too easily swept aside

or rendered meaningless. Whether the act will be a work that bene�ts the neighbor as intended,

or be immediately undone, or twisted and perverted by circumstance into harm, is a matter of

chance—certainly when we are dealing with the way of the world, this race of devils that only

appears as a nation of angels. It cannot meaningfully be demanded necessarily and

unconditionally that we act for the good of others if it will always be contingent whether any act,

depending upon whether it accords with the state or not, will be erased or reinforced, distorted or

maintained, turned into its opposite or left as it is. It is as likely to be possible as not. We have

not moved very far beyond fate to rationally ordered providence—we have chance here, not

universality and necessity. If one objects that Kantian morality should not be motivated by

concern for such consequences or contexts, the answer must be that it cannot then do good to its

neighbor in any morally signi�cant way. In the Foundations, Kant argues that:

An action performed from duty does not have its moral worth in the purpose which is to be

achieved through it but in the maxim by which it is determined. Its moral value, therefore,


does not depend on the realization of the object of the action but merely on the principle of

volition by which the action is done, without any regard to the objects of the faculty of

desire.… Wherein, then, can this worth lie if it is not in the will in relation to its hoped-for

e�ect? It can lie nowhere else than in the principle of the will, irrespective of the ends

which can be realized by such action. 115

We are back to good old Honest Consciousness who has at least tried, or, as Hegel puts it,

“[i]f this consciousness does not convert its purpose into a reality, it has at least willed it, i.e. it

makes the purpose qua purpose, the mere doing which does nothing … and can therefore

explain and console itself with the fact that all the same something was taken in hand and done.”

116

We do not have a consciousness capable of giving us an objective, unconditional, immediate,

and necessary law here. Its law “does not express, as an absolute ethical law should, something

that is valid in and for itself”; its laws “stop at Ought, they have no actuality … “ Kantian

117

practical reason does not give us laws; it merely issues commandments.

What does it mean to say that we do not have a law, but merely a commandment? In the

Foundations, Kant claims that we can derive the fourth formulation of the categorical

imperative, namely, a kingdom of ends, from the fact that we must consider each individual to be

a supreme lawgiver. A kingdom of ends is a union of rational beings in a system of common

115 F, 16 and KGS, IV, 399-400. Also, MPV, 119 and KGS, VI, 455.


117 PhS, 256 and GW, IX, 231.


laws. In other words, Kant is claiming that individual practical reason gives us all we need

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from which to derive the state and its laws. From supreme lawgivers, each obeying only laws

they give themselves, we can derive the system of laws that make up the state. Hegel denies that

individual consciousness can give us the sorts of laws we have or need in a state.

The sorts of laws that Hegel thinks we need are not grounded in the will of particular

individuals. Laws must have their own intrinsic being—they must exist in and for themselves.

This is not to say that laws are not constructed. Even God is constructed for Hegel. And the fact

that laws are constructed by citizens will be essential if we are to be free. But the law is not

constructed by individual consciousness. It does not have its source in individual Kantian

practical reason. It is the work of all, of a community, a culture, a nation. Laws are rooted in and

grow out of the customs, traditions, and practices of a people and are tied to their social and

public institutions, their public values, their philosophy, religion, and art. Such laws are not

subjective and contingent; they are objective, unconditional, and necessary—they are true and

absolute.

Let us see if we can understand and make at least a reasonably plausible case for the sorts of

laws that Hegel is after. Consider the example of a state and its educational system. In Hegel

view, the state would expect that its professors teach the truth. We need not conclude that this

will threaten academic freedom. Even if the state were a paradigm of respect for academic

freedom, it would still assume, at least, that its professors did not knowingly and systematically

teach falsehood. Even further, Hegel would hold, it will also expect these professors to know the

truth, at the very least, in the sense that it would be fraudulent for the university to hire professors

118 F, 50-51 and KGS, IV, 432-33.


who have not undergone the proper training and engaged in serious study, whose only credentials

were that they were enthusiastic about their opinions and sincere in their intentions. So when the

university hires professors of engineering or art it does not merely expect them like Honest

Consciousness to try their best. It expects them to actually be able to build real bridges and paint

real paintings and to teach others how to do so. We hold professors responsible for actually

doing these things, not just for trying. So also we expect the university to give its students an

education that will (assuming a just society) �t them for life in the state, prepare them for a

vocation, and give them the moral and scienti�c knowledge needed for these purposes. We

expect this at least in the sense that were the university systematically to fail to do so we would

conclude that it was not functioning properly. The law has a right to require more than that the

university try. It is expected to succeed.

What we need and have in culture, Hegel thinks, is far richer and more powerful than mere

subjective Kantian oughts. Sittlichkeit does not merely tell us that we ought to educate our

children or do good to our neighbors, it gives us an understanding of what things like good to our

neighbor and proper education actually are and it embeds them in our customs, traditions,

practices, and institutions so that we are able to act in the world and actually do act accordingly.

It enables us not just to try or to will, but to succeed, and to pass this knowledge and ability on to

others. It gives us much more than an ought—it gives us actuality.

What we must see is that Sittlichkeit is missing in Kant’s thought and that we need it to

account for our experience. A true law must grow up and be rooted in a community, in its

customs, traditions, and practices. It must be a force that morally empowers its citizens. It is not

enough (which is to say, for Hegel, it is not ethically enough) that it merely oblige them morally,


that it be a mere maxim that can be universalized, that it merely be willed. But that is enough to

establish its “moral value” for Kant, as he himself says. And so Kantian reason is not a

119

lawgiver. At best it is a test of laws.

VII

But even as a test of laws, Kant's ethics fail. In taking up a given content in order to test it, to see

if it is universalizable, we �nd, at least in some important cases, that one content will work as

well as its opposite. If you ask, for example, whether there should be private property, you will

�nd private property to be perfectly self-consistent—you can universalize it without

contradiction. But you can just as well universalize the absence of private property—a

community of goods or communism. That involves no contradiction either. 120

Singer, in his by now classic criticism, claims that Hegel is “almost incredibly

simple-minded” here. It seems to me, however, that Singer misses Hegel’s point entirely.

According to Singer, Hegel should be able to see that,

if everyone stole, whenever and whatever he pleased, there would be no such thing as

property and hence the purpose of stealing would be made impossible.… Yet [Hegel] seems

utterly confused as to why it would therefore be wrong to steal.… Kant’s point … is a

relatively simple one, which is perhaps why the profundities of Hegel are so far from the

mark. It could not be willed to be a universal law that everyone could steal whenever he

119 F, 16 and KGS, IV, 399.

120 PhS, 257-58 and GW, IX, 233-34. PR, 89-90 and SW, VII, 193-94.


wished to, for if everyone stole whenever he wished to, or took for his own anything he

happened to want, there would be no property and hence nothing to steal—there would be

nothing he could call his own. Stealing presupposes that there is such a thing as

property—something to be stolen … 121

Singer so little understands Hegel’s criticism of Kant that the last line of this passage,

intended to undermine Hegel, in fact concedes Hegel’s point against Kant. Hegel thinks that in

formulating a maxim the Kantian presupposes a certain form of property as given and that only

with this presupposition will the principle of universalization work. Unless we know what sort

of property is right in a given culture—and universalization alone will not tell us—we cannot

know what would constitute an act of theft and what would not. For example, suppose I enter a

store, pocket an article of consumption without putting down any money, and walk o�. Was that

theft or not? Was it immoral or not? Asking whether the maxim can be universalized will not

tell me. If I live in a market economy with private property, the act was theft. If I live in a

communist society based upon the principle "to each according to their need," it was not theft.

Both private property and communism are equally universalizable. Universalizability will not

decide the issue. We must have a cultural world with cultural content given to us. Either private

property or communism must be given as right before we can go on to decide what constitutes an

act of theft. We need Sittlichkeit, that is, settled and given customs, traditions, and

practices—we need culture—for morality to be possible.

121 M.G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961), 251-52.


Singer basically has Hegel’s argument backwards. He makes the common but mistaken

claim that in Hegel’s view the categorical imperative is empty and contentless, "Hegel assumes

that the categorical imperative is supposed to be applied in a vacuum … that Kant’s ethics is an

'empty formalism.'" Hegel, in Singer’s view, does not see that if "someone proposes to adopt a

certain maxim, or to act in a certain way in certain circumstances in order to achieve a certain

purpose, then we … 'already possess a content,' to which the categorical imperative can be

applied." This is not what Hegel is saying. Hegel is not denying that the categorical

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imperative has a content in Singer’s sense; Hegel fully accepts that in formulating a maxim we

take up a content. He says explicitly in the Phenomenology that what we have is a “standard for

deciding whether a content is capable of being a law or not,” and he goes on to talk about content

at least three times in the next page. Moreover, Hegel well knows that adopting a maxim

123

commits the person to an act or an end. After all, as we have seen, one of Hegel’s criticisms of

the categorical imperative is that it gives us an ought— for Hegel it is a mere ought rather than

an is— but nevertheless it does give us an ought (it gives us a commandment, though not a law).

The problem here stems, I think, from misinterpreting the following passage from Hegel’s

Philosophy of Right,

122 Singer, 252. K. Westphal, ”The basic context and structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,”

in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. F.C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1993), 252-53.

123 PhS, 256 and GW, IX, 232. In PR, 90 and SW, VII, 194, Hegel speaks of bringing a

particular content for acting under consideration.


The Proposition: ‘Act as if the maxim of thine action could be laid down as a universal

principle’, would be admirable if we already had determinate principles of conduct. That is

to say, to demand of a principle that it shall be able to serve in addition as a determinant of

universal legislation is to presuppose that it already possesses a content. Given the content,

then of course the application of the principle would be a simple matter. 124

Singer takes the implication of this passage to be that we do not have a content, that the

categorical imperative is contentless. But that is not the point the passage is making at all. The

point is that for the categorical imperative to work we must be given a content—in the sense of a

determinant principle of conduct. In other words, our culture has to tell us, for example, that

private property is right . Once we have this, Hegel is saying, then the categorical imperative

will have no di�culty in telling us that walking o� with the article from the store was theft.

Hegel is not claiming that the categorical imperative has no content. He is claiming that it will

not work without content. Where does the content come from? It is certainly not generated out

of the categorical imperative itself. It is taken up from culture—it is given by culture as right.

Private property must be given as right before we can see that what we did in the store was theft.

Hegel makes this point very clearly in the Philosophy of Right,

The absence of property contains in itself just as little contradiction as the non-existence

of this or that nation, family, &c., or the death of the whole human race. But if it is already

established on other grounds and presupposed that property and human life are to exist and

124 PR, 254 and SW, VII, 195.


be respected, then indeed it is a contradiction to commit theft or murder; a contradiction

must be a contradiction of something, i.e. of some content presupposed from the start as a

�xed principle. 125

The argument against Kant, then, is not that the categorical imperative is contentless. The

argument is that the categorical imperative presupposes it content; it takes up its content

uncritically. The Kantian formulating a maxim concerning theft assumes that private property is

given. As Hegel puts it in the Phenomenology, “Laws are … tested; and for the consciousness

which tests them they are already given. It takes up their content simply as it is, without

concerning itself … with the particularity and contingency inherent in its reality … its attitude

towards it is just as uncomplicated as is its being a criterion for testing it.” 126

Perhaps this point is made most clearly in the Natural Law essay, though Hegel overstates

his point in this early essay. He says,

[i]f this formalism is to be able to promulgate a law, some matter, something speci�c, must

be posited to constitute the content of the law. And the form given to this speci�c matter is

unity or universality. “That a maxim of thy will shall count at the same time as a principle

of universal legislation”—this basic law of pure practical reason expresses the fact that

125 PR, 90 and SW, VII, 194.

126 PhS, 257 (italics in text) and GW, IX, 232-33. Hoy makes an argument similar to mine;

see D.C. Hoy, “Hegel’s Critique of Kantian Morality,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 6 (1989),

216 �.


something speci�c, constituting the content of the maxim of the particular will, shall be

posited as concept, as universal. But every speci�c matter is capable of being clothed with

the form of the concept … there is nothing whatever which cannot in this way be made into

a moral law. 127

While Hegel is overstating his case in holding that anything can be made into a moral law,

nevertheless, his basic point is that di�erent cultures can and have established very di�erent

things as moral laws—very di�erent forms of property, for example. And it is obvious that quite

consistent social organizations can be built around such di�erent laws. The principle of

universalization is not going to show us that all but one of these forms of property and social

organization are contradictory; there will at least be many di�erent forms of property and social

organization that it will not show to be contradictory. The categorical imperative, then, will not

tell us which of these forms of property is right. Only after we are given one of these forms of

property as right can the categorical imperative begin to tell us what would be an act of theft and

what would not.

Hegel is not out to junk the categorical imperative. He is simply claiming that a certain

content must be given for it to work, a content which in his view Kant naively presupposes. This

content is given by culture and thus morality needs a theory of culture. Hegel is trying to drive

us toward Sittlichkeit. Furthermore, Hegel is not out to junk universalizability. In Hegel’s view,

universalizability is necessary for morality; it is just that it does not amount to morality. Acting

127 Natural Law, trans. T.M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975),

76-77 and, for the German, GW, IV, 436.


on a categorical imperative—in so far as that means acting merely on what reason tells us is

universalizable—is not enough to be moral. As Hegel puts it, something is not right because it is

non-contradictory; "it is right because it is what is right." 128

Let us see if we can even better explain the sort of moral law that Hegel is after. For Hegel,

we can fail in two ways. If we have a real law, the sort that Hegel wants, an absolute, not a mere

commandment or an ought, then this law cannot be issued by a single person or an individual

consciousness. That would turn the law into something tyrannical and it would turn obedience to

such a law into something slavish. On the other hand, while Kantian testing of laws certainly

gives us freedom from such laws, which are rejected as alien and heteronomous, nevertheless it

leaves us with individual consciousness and the loss of an absolute grounding. Hegel wants to

129

avoid both of these extremes.

What Hegel wants in a law is that it be valid in and for itself. It must not be grounded in the

will of particular individuals. In obeying such laws, self-consciousness must not in any way be

subordinating itself to a master whose commands are alien and arbitrary. Self-consciousness

must �nd these laws to be "the thoughts of its own absolute consciousness, thoughts which are

immediately its own. " We construct these laws; we issue them; but as participating in a

130

cultural consciousness, the consciousness of a people or nation, not as individual

consciousnesses. These laws are not arbitrary, tyrannical, or alien. They are not heteronomous.

128 PhS, 262 and GW, IX, 236.

129 PhS, 260 and GW, IX, 234-35.



They are my own laws. I am free in obeying them. But I also recognize them as universal,

objective, absolute, the will of all, the will of my people.

Self-consciousness does not even believe in its laws. Belief in something suggests that the

believer is an individual consciousness and that what it believes in is alien to it. For Hegel we

should be immediately one with our laws. It is not enough to merely believe in them. Laws

131

must be so rooted in the customs and practices of my culture that I simply know them. They are

facts. They are true. They are absolute. Is this really so strange? I suggest that we do not

merely believe that murder, for example, is wrong. We certainly do not need, in order to know

that it is wrong, to engage in a subjective process of analysis, a deduction, like asking whether

murder can be universalized without contradiction. To suggest that we must is to miss

132

something fundamental about morality. It is to subjectivize something that is absolute. Hegel's

concept of Sittlichkeit wants to avoid heteronomy and give us freedom, but without losing the

absolute.

We must move to culture, where ethical content has an objective being of its own, where it is

not just subjective rationality that decides what is moral as for Kant. Things are not moral

simply because my rationality �nds them to be moral. They are objectively moral—moral

in-themselves. Yet this objective moral content is not something other, alien to consciousness,

heteronomous, as Kant would think. It is the construction of consciousness. Think of the

131 Ibid.

132 Of course, to decide whether a particular act is an act of murder or whether it is �rst or

second degree murder might require a great deal of analysis and deduction. That murder itself is

wrong, however, does not and should not.


Athenian assembly creating its own laws—laws which grow out of and are reinforced by custom

and tradition, the myths and the gods, and thus are objective, absolute, ethical in-themselves for

the people they form. Only Sittlichkeit is capable of bringing all of the elements of the ethical

together: (1) subjective passion, interest, engagement, involvement; (2) all located in a cultural

context in which we are at home, which we �nd to be our own, all constructed by the citizens

themselves, where we are thus free; which (3) at the same time grows out of and is reinforced by

custom and tradition, public institutions, art, religion, and philosophy, the objective and absolute

values, ends, and purposes of a nation; and (4) within this context the citizens re�ect rationally

and establish universal laws. In such a context, citizens know and accomplish—they live in and

are a part of—the ethical. Ethical life exists; it empowers its citizens; it pervades and is actually

played out in their lives and practices. It is not a mere ought.

To fully justify Hegel's ethical views would require that we say much more about Sittlichkeit ,

but that is a task for another paper. Our task here has been to show that Hegel's critique of

Kantian ethics is much more powerful and thorough than has been recognized by those who fail

to see that Hegel criticizes Kant's ethics throughout a large part of Chapter V of the

Phenomenology, not just in the last two sections. Defenders of Kant often want to claim that

Hegel has not understood Kant or that Hegel attacks a crudely understood Kant. I hope I have

shown that Hegel understands Kant in a rather sophisticated way, thinks Kant is wrong, and does

a reasonable job of arguing against Kant. Moreover, it seems to me that many Kantians can be

accused of misunderstanding Hegel, and once they begin to understand him, they will �nd

arguments against Kant that, whether they can �nally be answered or not, certainly cannot

simply be dismissed as mere misunderstandings of Kant.

hegel's critique of kantian practical reason

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